I think most people will remark about how far this company has gone downhill and how it feels like a more antiquated company compared to its peer in the industry. But every year there are hundreds of posts on LinkedIn celebrating BNYM's next batch of interns - lavish lunches, lots of meetings with senior leadership, and other events the average employee isn't invited to. My gut reaction says this is just a ploy to make BNYM appear to be a hip place to work and they even throw in some eye candy within the batch of interns, qualifications not important! These senior leaders put up one heck of a facade but behind closed doors they are quite nasty. In reality, though, these interns are treated so much better than regular employees despite the fact that most won't even end up applying here when they graduate.
But here's the other problem. Morale is low across the board because the work has gotten crazy, but we've had layoffs and people who have left on their own because it's gotten so bad. We're an extreme skeleton crew now. I was forced to take on one intern , but it's been a disaster. Nice kid, but we can't find stuff for her to do that adds value. Based on the role of our group, even the most basic stuff will end up needing someone else from the team to double check the work when in reality, that employee would've saved time if she or he did it themselves without involving an intern.
I've had this experience for years now in different roles (been here 15 years) and during intern season, we end up taking more time out of our day to find something for our interns to do.
The emerging leader program has similar flaws, but at least these people end up doing some actual work for at least a year; though in my experience, they quickly leave the company despite coming in at a paygrade higher than their peers who had to start from the bottom.
In some ways, I feel bad to have these opinions. It's not the interns' fault - they keep a positive attitude (even if it doesn't appear genuine) and want get some real experience, but it usually doesn't happen like that. Still, it's pretty tacky that BNYM will treat its interns like royalty while giving long-tenured employees the shaft.